


The Rest Stop

by Necroplantser



Series: Saving Face [4]
Category: Elder Scrolls
Genre: Alcohol, Family Issues, Friends With Benefits, Implied Sexual Content, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Oneshot, Recreational Drug Use, Walk Into A Bar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:42:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25209418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Necroplantser/pseuds/Necroplantser
Summary: At a cornerclub in Port Telvannis, two travelers have therapy.
Series: Saving Face [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2121339
Kudos: 6





	The Rest Stop

Ignoring the itch at the back of his skull, Nethyn threw back a swig of flin as the cornerclub’s front door closed and the barstool beside him creaked with movement. As he shifted his eyes to the left he saw a massive high elf staring him down, a polite smile on his golden face. “This seat taken?” he asked, with an unplaceable accent. “Sorry if it’s too forward, don’t much like drinking alone and you look… amenable.”

“Do I?” Nethyn asked. “I must not be trying hard enough. Yes, sure, go ahead and sit.” The stranger arranged himself on the stool, broad shoulders brushing his own skinny ones, which he seemed to notice right away as he adjusted to give his new drinking partner some space. “Not from around here, are you, then?”

The stranger laughed and passed the barkeep some gold, turning his head to watch the man pour a hefty mug of mazte. “More or less. I’m just a vagrant, always looking for the next dive.”

“Well, you found it. No sense in us being strangers if we’re going to drink together,” Nethyn craned his neck to get a proper view of the altmer, about a head and a half taller than himself, muscular, a hint of softness to his face, and crossed his legs. “Nethyn Vari.”

“Sanyon.”

“Just Sanyon? Don’t you high elves take a lot of pride in your family lines?” As Sanyon shook his head, laughing, Nethyn noticed for a split second as his hair jostled that one ear was much shorter than the other. Clipped? Altmeri inbreeding? It wasn’t his business. He wrapped both hands around his cup, watching Sanyon’s movements -- casual, but practiced. A glint from the bigger elf’s hand caught his eye. “Are you married?” he asked.

Sanyon quirked a brow, covering the ring on his middle finger with one fluid motion. “Are you interested?” he asked in return, with the same curious cadence. Nethyn caught the brief grin that graced his pretty face and sucked his bottom lip in. “No, not married,” Sanyon finally said. “Once, but that ended a long time ago. You’d be doing no one any harm.”

Nethyn fought to restrain the blush that heedlessly spread across his face, darkening his cheeks further. “Listen, then, you look like a mer of charity. Do me a favor and I’ll do you one better.” His chest spasmed painfully in a concealed laugh when Sanyon straightened and smiled with teeth. Then, his hair whipping back, he held his cup bottom-to-ceiling and drained the rest of it unflinching. “Get a fellow vagrant another drink?”

As the altmer tapped his fingers on the bar, chuckling, Nethyn swore there was something familiar about his laugh, his face. He’d seen that structure before and heard that music, but behind the wall of liquor that was slowly encroaching he couldn’t place where. “Sure,” Sanyon conceded. “But I won’t get you drunk, alright?”

“You don’t need to.” The bartender eyed them both with a mix of humor and disdain, and Nethyn met him with a grin that he passed on to Sanyon. “How did you find yourself in Port Telvannis?”

“I was actually on my way to Vvardenfell, wanted to pay respects to some old friends of mine I’m worried didn’t make it out of the eruption.” Finally paying attention to his own drink, Sanyon paused. “I’m actually more familiar with that part of the province, this is just a stop. I heard the local magelord is accommodating, but I don’t mess around with Telvanni anymore.”

“Ah, too bad,” Nethyn said, accepting his refilled cup with a grateful nod. “You are right now.”

“Am I? I’ll admit that before I heard about Tel Bosri I hadn’t known any Varis.”

“We’re a mainland family, my father settled in Sadrith Mora. Had a scion of the Garil family marry in -- my mother. May she rot in peace,” he added, sniffing. “But that’s neither here nor there. Galien’s my great-grandfather, little more distant than that; the mer’s First Era ancient, think his grandfather was chimer.”

“Oh, they’re your family then.”

“Very astute. I’ll admit I was a little estranged from them, so far away from Tel Bosri as Sadrith Mora is. What about your family?”

Sanyon paused. “I didn’t know them. My predecessors, I mean. I had a family back in Vvardenfell some time ago, but I left… don’t know what happened to my sons, or my ex-wife after that.”

“You have children? You look so young.”

“Eh, you know us high elves, we live a long time…” He fidgeted with his ring, and gave Nethyn a mournful look. “What about you, do you have any family around?”

“A couple scorned ex-lovers here and there.” Nethyn shrugged. “I have a son. My friend is raising him with her niece and her in-law, last I checked. So, I can’t judge a deadbeat dad,” he laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I just wasn’t cut out for it. Were you?”

Sanyon mused into his drink for a solid sixty seconds. “I could have. But my wife didn’t want to raise children with a man who wasn’t attracted to her.”

“To her?”

“To women in general. Married her because I thought I could right myself, make myself like women, but by the time I realized I couldn’t, we’d already had kids. Far as I know she raised them just fine on her own. What about your boy, what happened to his mother?”

Now it was Nethyn’s turn to think. He raised a finger to give Sanyon notice that he needed time, and then drained half his glass. A pang of sadness shot through him, though not for his boy. “Nothing I care to talk about,” he said. “If you really must know, she’s long dead…”

“Oh.” Sanyon gave him a pitiful look. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. We didn’t mesh. Weren’t you going to take me to bed?”

“No, no, let’s talk about this.” Nethyn groaned, regretting his overactive mouth, but let him continue. “Maybe in private, though… I take it you have a room?” Pursing his lips, Nethyn stood from his seat and beckoned Sanyon to follow him, down the stairs in the back of the cornerclub to a group of doors. Behind the one in the middle was a homey, classical dunmeri affair -- a well-loved bed, some wall tapestries, and a half-open set of drawers. “You’ve been here a while. If you’re traveling, how do you drop that many drakes on holding a room for so long?”

“Never underestimate the power of local family wizardry.” He paused. “That, and… Galien didn’t know how better to say sorry for letting me live literally right under Neloth for nearly a century.”

“Oh, _Neloth?_ ” Sanyon barked out a laugh. “Yeah, I understand now.”

Nethyn sat down on the bed, pulling his legs up beneath him and adjusting himself to his comfort. “What,” he said. “Was he the one who made you think, ‘oh, I won’t mess around with Telvanni anymore’? Because I’d believe it. Horrible little man, I lived under him in Sadrith Mora for sixty years and in Tel Mithryn for twenty…”

When Nethyn gave the mattress beside him a pat, Sanyon chose instead to sit down in a wicker chair. Nethyn shrugged, and gestured to him. “I did him a couple favors, a while back,” he said. “After I left my wife I got into mercenary work. Did things for people here and there, Neloth was one of ‘em. You raised your family in Tel Mithryn, then?”

“Oh, no. Worse than that,” Nethyn grouched, digging through the bag at the foot of his bed and producing a pipe and small satchel. “Skyrim. I lived about a ten minute walk from Falkreath, with my girlfriend and her niece and… well, I guess at the time, her niece’s girlfriend.”

“Always good to hear about our people.”

“Indeed, there’s not a lot of us in Skyrim… but I had a good situation there, up to a point.” He dug a pinch of ground kreshweed from the satchel and patted it into the bowl of his pipe, clicking his fingers to light a flames spell on it. “Turned out my girlfriend was _very_ much wanted. This was right after my son was born, so you can imagine, all these things happening at once. His mother was gone, so we packed up, fled to the Rift.”

Nethyn offered the lit pipe to Sanyon, who accepted readily, then asked, “Wanted? Who wanted her, the Legion?”

“No, the Thalmor, but they might as well be one and the same for all the good the Empire’s doing us.” He shuddered, took the pipe back, and had a long draw from it. “You don’t look like you’d serve under them, so I feel fine telling you, and it’s not like it’s completely unknown now… Evvie had a bit of a history with them. We got a visitor telling her some of her old friends from Cyrodiil wanted her back in their lives, she slammed the door in his face -- this little bosmer boy. I’m a terrible person, of course, so I listened in. Turned out they were reforming the Blades, but they don’t serve the emperor anymore. They hunt dragons, or some crazy shit going on in Skyrim. Evesaes didn’t want to hunt dragons, I suppose. Not that I blame her. You’ve gone stiff, are you alright?”

Sanyon, who had absolutely gone rigid, took a shaky breath and came back down to Mundus from wherever he’d gone in his head. Nethyn watched him twiddle his thumbs in his lap before he spoke again, his voice much quieter now, and his eyes darting towards the door. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just got some history myself, didn’t expect to hear about the Blades.” Awkwardly he chuckled. “Technically I served them for a while, after I found myself in Cyrodiil. Did a lot of odd jobs. What made you move to the Rift, just her being wanted?”

Eventually, eventually, Nethyn answered. “The Thalmor came to our home to get Evesaes themselves. Her niece -- her niece is a powerful Destruction mage, and you’d never tell because she’s blind as a bat… she killed two of them and they tried to take her in, too. The rest is a blur to me, but we packed up all of ourselves and fled to Falkreath, told the carriage driver to take us to the next region over. The Rift was Stormcloak territory, they’d kill Thalmor on sight. Not a great place for mer, you understand, because they just don’t trust all of us on principle… but it kept us safe. Still is keeping them all safe, I think.” Another draw from his pipe seemed to calm him down enough to continue. Even after two years, the incident was fresh in his mind. “Enough about me, though.” He watched Sanyon squirm at that. “Tell me about your family.”

“Not much to tell,” Sanyon said. “Just my wife Maelasi and I, and our sons, Casain and Mausur.” Something about that sparked something in Nethyn’s brain, but once again past the alcohol -- and now past the kresh -- he couldn’t place it. “You look a little… disturbed, Nethyn, you okay?”

“Yeah, I just thought I’d heard one of those names before. But it’s part of living in Vvardenfell, you know a few Ashlander names. My grandfather Valdren was raised by an Ashlander man, actually, come to think of it... Go on.”

“I always had some doubts about Mausur being my son -- not that Maelasi had cheated on me, they were identical twins, both had altmer eyes and ears, and how weird is that, elf twins… but he was just a little off. I only knew them both ‘til they were five, but Mausur never really acted a boy. Maelasi was never bothered! Said Mephala might’ve found one of our children, and that it was a blessing if anything. You mind passing that pipe back?”

“Oh, right, sorry.” Handing it over with trembling fingers, Nethyn gave Sanyon a once-over. “You never found out what happened to any of them?”

“As far as I know, the Blight took them… This was quite a while ago, you know. How old are you?”

“...Three and a quarter centuries, thereabouts. With any luck I’ll have a life like my grandfather Galien’s ahead of me -- long and _quiet._ ”

“Yes, a _very_ long time ago.” Sanyon had a couple puffs, coughed, and went right back to the pipe. “I wish I’d kept it down, sometimes. That I’d been able to stay and watch them grow up. Mae thought it’d tarnish her honor, though, and our kids’, and she was a fiery one… it’s not something I like to talk about.”

“Would you rather I talked about something, now?”

“Yes. Tell me about your girlfriend -- Evesaes?” Holding the stem of the pipe between his thumb and forefinger, Sanyon rested his shoulders on his spread knees and looked up at Nethyn on the bed. “Surely you wouldn’t be propositioning me if you were still together.”

“We’re… not.” Nethyn turned his gaze to the floor. “When I left her with my son, we had a disagreement. She wanted me to raise him. He looked… too much not like me. I wanted nothing to do with him. I know for a fact he was my son, don’t misunderstand me, but I could only bear to stick around to name him. We’d agreed when his mother was gone that we would raise him together, but…”

“But he reminded you too much of her?”

“Something like that. I told Ev, if she had any love for that child, she could raise him, but I didn’t even want to look at him. So she agreed, on the grounds that I left, if I really didn’t want him.”

“So now you’re here?”

“I was a fairly hardcore vagrant for a while, yes, and then I got into contact with my family -- their ghosts, really, but I was always close with my grandfather Valdren in particular, even after his death. He told me Vvardenfell was no place for me anymore, and to go to see my father’s family, which was odd because he was my mother’s grandfather… meant I had to give up on my Ayleid research, though. Horrible.”

“But you got to see your family.” Sanyon passed back the pipe. “Isn’t that something?”

“I suppose. Met some cousins I didn’t know I had. Galien promised to teach me some of the old family secrets, and help with a few more personal endeavors. In return for a few favors, of course, which is why I’m back out here instead of holed up in that massive tower-city he’s got.”

“Maybe I could help. What does he need?”

“You want to get involved with the Telvanni again?” Nethyn asked, incredulous. “Your funeral, I suppose. His great-granddaughter, my cousin Felara let one of his prized possessions loose in a fit of adolescent defiance. Something we all do, you know? He’s torn up about it because he worked personally for it after his husband died, and he’s the one who convinced Felara’s parents to keep her around. So he feels responsible for something that wasn’t his fault…”

“What was it?” Sanyon watched as Nethyn drew from the pipe, then as he realized they’d burnt through what he had packed, then as he dumped out the ashes to refill it. “I’ve been on some retrieval jobs, it can’t be that bad.”

Nethyn laughed out a cloud of smoke, set the smoldering pipe on the dresser, and straightened his shoulders to look Sanyon in the eye. “It’s a lich,” he said.

“A _lich._ ” Sanyon snorted. “Well, that’s pretty up there. Say we start working on that tomorrow? It’s getting a bit late…”

“...and you did say you’d take me to bed.”

“That I did, that I did. Care to make some room?”

“Care to set some boundaries? I don’t take my clothes off for strangers.”

Sanyon paused at this, just a little, enough to ask: “Then how do you have sex? And we’re hardly strangers now…”

“I’ll show you, come here. You should take your clothes off, though, it’s hardly legal for someone like you to _wear_ them.” Nethyn scooted over on the bed, allowing Sanyon the side with the pillow, and as the altmer sat down to watch, his jaw slackened as Nethyn held out the palm of his hand, a solid conjured mass hovering just a centimeter above. Sanyon gripped the sheets in what seemed to be a reflex and Nethyn found himself glancing back down at the ring glinting again on his middle finger. 

  
  
  
  


Sanyon was asleep, now, curled up on his side on the other half of the bed. Dead asleep, Nethyn found, when he reached over and grabbed his wrist, twisting Sanyon’s ring around on his finger.

Satisfied, he turned over and fell asleep.


End file.
